Experiments in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING] []VINTAGE 1934]

Wells, H.G.

Published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934

About this Item

Very good condition beige cloth boards with black front cover and spine lettering. Includes List of Illustrations and Index. Illustrated with numerous drawings, black-and white photographic plates and a black-and-white photographic portrait frontispiece plate. The spine and board edges are sun darkened as are scattered areas of the covers (see photographs). The spine/binding is exceedingly tight and square and all pages are in fine condition. The copyright page states "Published October, 1934." ".a series of questions asked of life, and the answers given in the intimate experiences of one of the great livers of our era." ".the best histories of the break-up of the nineteenth century are to be found in the novels of H.G. Wells; and, indeed, before the appearance of this "Experiment," I had often thought myself that the most interesting document upon the end of one century and the beginning of another might well be the spiritual biography of the author of those novels in which he put so much, but never all, of himself. Well, here it is, and it is certainly one of the richest, and most curious, shrewdest and frankest, intensive and extensive, books published for many a year. H.G. Wells, it must be remembered, is more than a man; he is a symbol. He is the exponent of that lower class which has always produced self-made men, but in our own times suddenly overflowed the caste system and, in its successful representatives, began to take charge of our affairs. Most of our great men on the up-and-up from the farm, or the semi-slums (where Wells lived as a child), have been money-makers, absorbed in the conquest of power over things and the owners of things. But H.G. was not like that. From his meager beginnings, with servant for mother and a gardener who became a cricket professional for father, through his six different attempts to get himself started in the world, in environments which changed, like scenes in a historical movie, from a grimy lower-class London to association with the most interesting people in his time, Wells was obsessed with an interest in how the thing worked. He wanted to know how you got educated, how you made love, how you handled marriage while you still kept falling in love, why the world talked science and failed to practice it, how a state was organized, why states fought each other, how a poor man could make himself secure without selling his liberty - every kind of question which a keen intelligence might ask of our times. And that is what this fascinating book is, a series of questions asked of life, and the answers given in the intimate experiences of one of the great livers of our era. Here is the secret of a sudden capture of a great public again and again by this great journalist who never achieved a style, never was quite sure what that meant, never expected any of his books to "live." Whereas the American gentleman and scholar is concerned with the difficulties of his kind in a tumultuous age of democracy, the English journalist has helped to make the democracy, loves it, grew upon it, wants nothing better than to help guide it toward a world made safe for intelligent, free-loving, peace-loving, waste-hating H.G. Wellses. Do not, however, think [the book] is an essay on politics or another world history of one man's time. It is closer to Pepys than to Gibbon, though not much like either. Indeed it can best be described as Wells himself describes it in the first chapter, as the adventures of a brain. This brain had a body, sickly at first, then adventurous and amorous. This brain was handicapped by being (so the author says) flexible but second-rate, and by being born into a station from which only hard work or excessive ingenuity could escape. And so one gets a story, which for chapters at a time reads like of Wells's own novels, broken by reflections upon the absurdities, stupidities, cruelties, and inconsistencies of the world the brain began to discover for itself." -H. Canby.

Seller Inventory # 000099

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Experiments in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING] []VINTAGE 1934]
• Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
• Publication Date: 1934
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Very Good